WI: True National Self-Determination for All?

Typo

Banned
How could one get Wilson to actually believe in true self-determination, i.e. not splitting up German lands and not splitting up Hungarian lands? And what would the effects be?
This is effectively impossible, because "true self-determination" would require it to be given to the Indian, Irish, Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese and other colonial peoples in the Entente Empires. This effectively makes the whole thing a joke.
 

JohnS

Banned
Same goes for the (completely assimilated) Ruhr Poles, and West Prussia on a province level was close to 50% German, 50% Polish/Kashubian. Since not a single German would have voted for Poland, but at least 5% of Kashubians would have voted for Germany, a plebiscite on the province level would have ended up in Germanys favor. rule.

40% according to German census(which was manipulated by adding soldiers and officials to the data). Kashubs were pro-Polish and anti-German since middle XIX century and overwhelmingly voted for Polish parties in pre-1914 time. Anyway they weren't a large group so their vote wouldn't be that influential. Silesians, Kashubs and Mazurs are three different groups that had different political parties, views and history. Of them only Mazurs were greatly pro-German(or rather indifferent to Polish patriotism). But still the result of the vote was largely influenced by the Polish-Bolshevik war, and the fact that scarce attention was given to the region by Polish movement due to war.
 
This is effectively impossible, because "true self-determination" would require it to be given to the Indian, Irish, Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese and other colonial peoples in the Entente Empires. This effectively makes the whole thing a joke.

Exactly. Either Wilson was blindly idealistic or he realized that playing along with the Entente's revanchist claims (especially France) was more politically beneficiary.
 
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